Scientific genius and visionary inventor Nikola Tesla is born at the stroke of midnight in Smiljan, Croatia. He wastes little time in revolutionizing the world through foundational developments in electromagnetism, electrical current, wireless power and communications, weaponry, robotics, computer science, and more.
“Tesla is like a character out of a science-fiction novel, the quintessential mad genius,” says author Tom McNichol. “Whether he was more mad than genius depends on who you’re talking to.”
Tesla job-hopped from Budapest to Paris to New York, where he joined his scientific contemporary and lifelong nemesis Thomas Edison. Tesla had already privately built a successful prototype of the alternating-current induction motor. He soon upgraded Edison’s inefficient direct-current motors and generators, and he was perfecting the polyphase system for distributing AC power when he left Edison’s employ after a salary dispute, in 1886.
During Tesla’s AC/DC war with Edison (see here), the eccentric inventor was bankrolled by engineer-entrepreneur George Westinghouse (see here). Westinghouse won the current war with hydroelectric power generated from Niagara Falls, leading to more than a century of AC supremacy. Tesla’s subsequent innovations in wireless communications and power gave birth to everything from the radio to the Wi-Fi network and our probably inevitable cordless future.
Tesla’s personal quirks, like his obsessive love of pigeons and a physical revulsion to jewelry, didn’t help his career. He died in 1943, penniless and mostly alone, in New York. His personal papers were quickly impounded and eventually declared top secret by the FBI.
“The modern industrial world, powered by alternating current, is very much a child of Tesla,” explains McNichol. “Tesla was truly a visionary in the sense that he saw things no one else did.”—ST